>> i'm being battered by a hurricane that's been downgraded to a category 2 hurricane but that doesn't mean the wind and rain have stopped. it is still sitting on top of the statement we have been watching the destruction overnight and into today and into the evening and we have it

all covered for you. it is packing winds up to 115 miles per hour at this point and where i am now in central florida is expected to get worse overnight as we are on the air now so stay tuned, we have got it covered for you. you have to see this moment. this moment is from earlier. it is on the southern tip of pine island earlier today. check it out, if you will. >> whoo! whoo! >> you got to be kidding me! you got to be kidding me right now! >> and the threat is not over yet. there's still people who are out there sheltering in place. gaoept know their condition. we don't know if they're in a safe place now. there are power outages up to almost 2 million people across

the statement we have our correspondents and our crews fanned out over the state of florida. bill is in punta gorda. brian todd is in largo. jerry is in bradenton and jeremy the weather center. bill, ace understand you're on lockdown tonight. you ever seen some of the biggest action with the wind and rain. what are you seeing where you are right now? >> well down it's calmed dion. there is a 9:00 curfew in punta gorda including media and a blackout with well over a million customers florida power & light. we saw the back end of the eye of the storm. once the eye passed over we thought we saw pretty stiff winds but the bag end of it we were trying to hold the hotel

door shut because the power had gone out and the mag netted i can lock was failing so we were tying cords to keep the door shut. we are lucky to be in a hotel with category 4 windows which were tested but big news the sigh of relief was we didn't see the massive storm surge that was predicted when we woke up this morning. >> i bet you didn't. so, listen. we are since 2:00 where i am, they have been asking people to get off the roads. most people bill have been heeding that warning and doing it officials have said. what about where you are? i've been watching some of your live shots earlier. it seems to be violent at times. i don't know if the worst of it has passed and you're going to get the outer bands later. are they heeding the warnings? have you got in the indication from officials the danger you are in now? >> there was a briefing a few

hours ago 60,000 people in the danger zone. punta gorda 150,000 most of which are retirees. this storm is unlike any before. that's the points on. this this point 18 years ago got hammered by hurricane charlie. they retired the name charlie from all future hurricanes. you got to wonder when we wake up tomorrow will the devastation from ian be the same, will they retire that name as well in the good thing is the city built a coastal adaptation plan that's been in the works over a decade now which means stricting building codes and buying properties that are flood prone and turning them in public places many we will see the fruits of those efforts when the sun comes up in the morning,

don. >> all right, bill. i want you to stand by. i'll going to get to my colleague derek in bradenton. you like enthis going into a car wash with windows down and i know you're getting debris flying. i want to show viewers. we are getting the same thing. things are flying off the building from time to time. some of this flew over from earlier but it's a pretty dangerous situation here and i'm sure it's dangerous where you are. you had some heavy winds earlier today. what's up now? >> don we are on our 12 of these tropical storm force gusts. we had hurricane winds earlier this afternoon for about six hours of time. hine ian is literally rewriting the record books across southwestern florida. it is credible to see the frosty of these winds clocking in by the way some gusts at 150 miles

per hour just absolutely incredible. this to me in my opinion, i studied this, this has the signature of yet another billion dollar disaster here across the united states. i mean you look at the damage that we've already seen, we saw the storm surge video. we heard the national hurricane center acting director talked to our colleague anderson how storm surge rose 5 feet in 5 minutes along the coastline, that is incredible. we are part of the nearly two million customers in the state of florida without electricity. we have been plunged into darkness because earlier we saw some of the transformers completely blown out behind us literally throwing sparks into the air. we saw aungs being ripped off some of the local businesses here debris flying through the air. it has been a vicious day and i fear for the people who have to ride the storm out at night

especially as ills makes its slow trudge inland across the peninsula. this storm did exactly what we hoped it wouldn't but knew it might strengthening approach in this warming world. >> so from derek in bradenton brian todd is joining us from lago. i understand you got a lot of damage today and able to assess it. what's happening now? what did you see? >> well don, you talk about damage devastation and loss for any given family in this entire region you're seeing an illustration of it right behind me. this is a house in largo, florida north of st. petersberg. the front of the house looked intact but i walked around to

this side and throughout room after room after room it has been completely burned out, debris all over the place many we just talked to the owner who said that his family has had since 1972, 50 years. he inherited it after a death in the family. they came back here to renovate the house and now look at. this they've lost almost everything. they say they're fullin assured so they hope to recover some of this but it's not clear if any of this is recoverable. we traveled around this area in largo. we saw a neighborhood of manufactured homes two roofls completely ripped off the houses so there's still a lot of devastation. we are assessing it now while the storm is with us many these are dangerous places to go in and out of. first responders will always tell you going into a house like this to try to recover your belongings or anything very

dangerous many you've got power lines a lot of debris that can pose a danger to you going into these houses so for people out there trying to assess their damage just keep that in mind you've got to be very careful going into a house like this, bob. >> stand by. do be careful, brian todd in largo. let's get to the expert my colleague tom in the cnn weather center. almost on cue it feels like started pouring buckets of water on top of us this thing is coming here sitting here. it's not moving quickly. the winds aren't high but man we are getting a lot of rain here. >> yeah, in fact, don if you look at the infrared satellite imagery these bright purple colors near the core are still producing rain. tornadic activity over bahamas over 8 of them. latest advisory we brought down sustained winds 100 miles per hour. i mean we've got hurricane force

winds centered out about a hundred and you've got about a 350 mile wiped swath of tropical storm force winds. national hurricane center said the entire peninsula is experiencing tropical storm conditions. now dry air is filtering in to the south. that's going to cut off rain totals. dry air now, this is a shook the last few frames, is coming into this northern edge through orlando. that may drop some rain totals down as well. doesn't matter. we've already seen 2-3 months worth of rain in 24 hours. this is the loop we are backing up in time showing it moving in 3:05 moving in winds 150 this a category 4 but it matches the wind speed when charlie moved in 18 years ago so they're tied for the strongest. now that doesn't mean anything in the offseason. national hurricane season is going to resouthwest this like michael. when it made landfall they

revised it to category 5. if you look at the core of the system the core of charlie would fit into the eye with room to spare. heavy rain bands have upon on the northern periphery. the winds are so strong it knock out our weather gauges from venice fort myers and naples many we fear the images that we will see from the air from charlotte harbor fort myers to naples, it could look like what we saw in mexico beach when michael moved in. that will be staggering. we don't know exactly how high the surge is in many locations because in naples it got up to 7 feet and the surge recorder broke to give us that height. there's only so many surge monitors along the coastline

winds 124 punta gorda 140 came coral we have almost two million without power. we are going to 3.5 maybe 4 million without power as the system rakes florida central 100 miles per hour. the root systems of these trees are not going to be able to handle the wind conditions as it moves across the region. >> here's the thing many folks came from the tampa area because they thought they would be safer and this would miss them. now the hurricane has followed them to orlando. you mentioned punta gorda. bill i'm going to bring back in. i'm pretty sure you can hear me. bill is our climate correspondent. you've got questions for tom? you want to ask him some stuff? >> it's interesting. i met a gentleman who is a structural engineer.

he said he was driving over the bridge u.s. 43 and the wind was actually flexing his car windows. so he just cracked his window he thought to release the pressure and it blew the sun roof literally out of his suv. he had a wind monitor he said registered as 156 as a gust. i'm wondering, you touched on that it that this storm was bigger than our instruments that it is was more fierce than we were able to measure. >> well it's very possible not just with the instruments as we mention, with the surge but with the winds as well. this is going to be really inspected. they're going to pore over all the data in the offseason and assess. we may know tomorrow how high the surge was. so many locations we don't know. governor desantis said his crews were reporting 12-foot surge. some of the forecasts were you

to 18. we just don't know. we just don't moment but with the winds we have better equipment. i suspect, derek is right there is going to be a billion dollar disaster and they will retire the name ian most likely. it's interesting to note. think about all the storms that start with the letter i in history, irene, irma, ida, they just continue. there's so many of them. i think what we are going to find here is maybe just maybe waits stronger at land failed and the surge a little higher to the south than we really know right now. >> gentlemen thank you very much. bill i want you to be safe all our correspondents derek brian todd as well. we are going to get back to you checking with you throughout the hours on cnn. appreciate it we've got a lot of ground to cover in the coming hours on cnn. we are live in florida as ian is making its way brutally across

the state. there's a lot of damage we are going to talk about in sarasota, fort myers and others. we are back in a moment with live coverage on cnn.

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go. they're waiting for the green light. >> listen. you're talking about just the damage here. we were out here getting ready for our shots and parts hunkere. go on. >> the storm surge is 18 feet across. that water hits those low-lying areas in the barrier from boca grande and the coastline. we have people that are trapped in homes, people on their second floor, some people that there are reports people in attics and we want to get to them not wasting one second. very frustrating from our perspective we can't get there, so we are waiting for that green light so we can assess and get to the people in need.

>> yes. when you say people that are trapped in their attics or hiding it brings me back to katrina some of my loved ones who spent time in attics waiting for the water to go down and waiting to be rescued. that is really serious business many assistant by. i want to get to ed. ed, i understand you have a flash flood emergency happening in the area in fort myers. what's going on there? in sarasota i should say. pardon me. >> that's okay. we get those warnings because of the amount of rainfall. our rivers were already at minor flood stage before ian came along. we have not been able to leave the eoc yet because we are under tropical storm conditions. talking to the weather service we might be able to roll out 3 a.m. so our teams will go out and we will get feedback.

when first light comes we will get aerial surveillance. the governor and the state said they're going to give some helicopter support that will come in but we get those whenever these storms are out there. >> what is the most dangerous part of the storm? because it's interesting and it's kind of tricky because when the storm is right on top of you people tend to stay inside and they're safer inside or after it is extremely dangerous, especially in the quadrant.

and all the storm surge, that's very deadly because we tell people

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>> back now live coverage hurricane ian. i go straight to chief anthony holloway from the st. peters dszburg police the thanks for joining us what are the conditions there? >> we have gusts 70 miles per hour and rain since about 6:00 this morning. >> chief what about rescues in

your area? right now, we are still monitoring throughout the evening but as of now we have no rescues coming through our station. >> you have no rescues. what about, are you okay with the number of people? are you satisfied with the number of people who either evacuated went to shelters and or stayed put? >> we had a lot of people that stayed put. we only had about 4,000 people that went to our shelters in pinellas county. we are worried about that. when the weather clears we will be doing an assessment in the morning. >> that's when you're going to find out what happened. are you worried? i'm sure your hopeful. as you know when the sun comes up we see the worst of what these storms delivered overnight. >> so, we aren't worried about

that we haven't received any calls from our 911 center so we will be out assessing the damage in the city first thing in the morning. >> and what are you going to be offer as far as resources to folks once ush able -- you are able to get out an assess? >> first thing we will do is clear the major roadways and work to try to remove debris from the streets. we will be working with duke energy to restore power to our city. we have about 60,000 people in pinellas county without power. just to see what services need when we contact them on the street. >> were you able to get out and see an assessment of the flooding? >> we do have some units as of 10:00 today. we haven't had any flooding.

we have a couple more bands so first thing in the morning we may so more flooding but right now we haven't seen serious flooding in our city. >> as you can understand i'm standing in the wind and rain. it's hard to hear you sometimes. you mentioned power outages. can you tell us how many people in your area are without power if you know? >> sure. from pinellas county we have about 60,000 people without power. at 10:00 we received those numbers so again as the next bank comes through we may lose more power. as people call we will get those numbers and first thing in the morning assess the damage throughout the city. >> i imagine you don't know how long it will take to restore until you figure out the damage and what you need to do to get power back. >> that's correct. we know there are traffic signals that are down there.

are trees down. so as soon as first light we will get our crews out there to start moving the debris and work with duke energy to restore power quickly as possible. >> all right. chief holloway, i appreciate it you be safe, all right. >> you too. be careful out there. >> thank you so much. so, we are checking in with folks from counties all over the state of florida being hit by this very ferocious hurricane. we are going to be back and joined by an official from collard county in a moment. ♪ ♪ the best part? the prequel is pretty sweet too. ♪ ♪

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>> hurricane ian bearing down on florida. rick castro is a collier county commissioner many commissioner, thank you so much for joining us many as i understand, you say that this is a once in a

lifetime storm. talk to me about that and the damage you're experiencing. >> well, as we are following the storm now everyone is talking about where it is, where it's going to. let me tell you where it was earlier today. when the storm slammed into the fort myers area, a lot of the meteorologists will tell you it was the communities just south of that eye that took the brunt of a very unique storm surge. i mean i lived in irma on marco island where i live, and it's parts of the district where i'm county commissioner, part of nail else, the communities are a nice piece of paradise except for storms like this, but the angle the way the storm hit created a very severe storm surge. was the storm

surge we had down here was horrific. we did a great job of evacuating people but when they come back here, it's one thing. irma is a perfect example. what is the a wind hurricane. plenty of water. but you lose your things, you go into your house you make dinner and you wait for the contractor to show up. i'm not making light of it. you have 12 feet of storm surge, like fire or tornado that is horrific damage and we experience every inch and i saw ever inch because i love on marco island. i didn't evacuate. i was here working as a former military person with the first responders. i wasn't going to evacuate to a hotel and come back here so we worked hard to get people out of here and do a lot of things but the storm surge was unique. during irma as people might remember a lot of meteorologists were suggesting 12, 15 foot of

storm surge when here on marco we got about 4, 5 or 6 feet a lot of the meteorologists sort of took of, got a little this storm didn't do that the wiggles and the wobbles exacerbated the storm surge so a lot of people were focused on fort myers and where it's gone next. i can tell you, we are left with a war zone down here, a serious, serious flooding and unbelievable storm surge that came in here with a vengeance. i mean i watched every inch of it and you know a lot of people that evacuated are going to come back to some pretty horrific things with their homes and to see our community.

>> well, a couple of things i want to ask you because i had think woodburn of 200,000 or so people without power. we are looking at pictures of your home. >> i've been in my home in the dark all day. >> you have. if you don't have power, how are you communicating with emergency and first responders and such? >> well initially when we first started this morning we did have power so i basically had a command center in my house. i also had walkie-talkie type communication with about 400 senior leaders and first responders in my district and on marco island so we were communicating actually very well and the thing about this storm don is it didn't have a lot of wind initially that affected us the way irma did when irma was heavy, heavy wind, we lost cell phones very quickly, power went out immediately, no wi-fi, no cable, no watching the news

media. we had that in the very beginning and so, it did allow us to coordinate things before the wrath of the storm really hit and get some extra people out especially as the storm started to take a turn but then you know, basically we still have text messaging. i'm obviously talking to you on my phone so we continue to communicate but the beauty was we did get a lot of folks out of here but getting them out of here didn't stop the wind, and especially the water. so although we had strong gusts here and it was a serious storm it once an irma. i wasn't a katrina, but the storm surge was really one for the record books, how it came in with such velocity and so many places that you would think are protected at a high enough level, any given hurricane they are at a high enough elevation. people are going to come back

here and all around me that's n pass until. there's more than a happen full of us on marco island. we got the bulk out. those that hunkered down it wasn't horrific winds but the water was unbelievable and a lot of people have permanent damage here due to the incredible amount of flooding that came with this storm and unexpected, as you know there was a lot of changes at the last minute when it's a few hundred miles south of cuba and it's wiggling 10 miles not east. nobody pays much attention but as i learned from my time in the

military a bunch of those small changes when i gets close to you adds up to one giant muscle movement and that's what happened with this storm and it hitties perpendicular and moved up north, but the bottom the dirty side of the storm went through name ills, marco island, isle of capri and did extensive damage. >> i don't think you can hear me. rick, thank you so much. we appreciate it. listen. be safe, please, you and your neighbors. i got to show the folks what's happening here. rick is exactly right. we have seen a lot of wind. obviously bigger if this is a hurricane, storm force winds but i feel like somebody's dumping buckets of water. having grown up on the gulf coast you get a band of rain

that comes through and dries up. these bands are just sitting. the rain is just sitting on to have of us and we are following ian on the florida peninsula. we are back in a moment. don't go anywhere.

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